Chart: How Many Homes Does D.R. Horton Sell?

Examining the most important statistic from the nation's most important homebuilder.

Sometimes, the most important data about a company is the hardest to come by. In this case, I'm referring to historic sales figures from D.R. Horton(NYSE:DHI), the nation's largest homebuilder by units sold. While this is the single-most accurate reflection of D.R. Horton's performance -- not to mention, it provides valuable insight into the condition of the overall housing market -- a comprehensive data set containing the figures is nowhere to be found.

It's for this reason I decided to share the chart below. In the midst of conducting research on the broader economy, I dug through D.R. Horton's quarterly filings to discover how its unit sales are recovering from the downturn. And the answer, as you can see for yourself, is: slowly.

Source: Quarterly filings.

While the performance of one company may seem inconsequential, it's important to keep in mind that, as I mentioned above, D.R. Horton is the nation's largest homebuilder by number of units sold, and as my colleague Morgan Housel has noted, "there hasn't been a strong economy without a strong housing market in modern history."